Safety instructors try to keep it real
OND DU LAC - Wisconsin’s hunter education program celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2017.
The program’s history is marked with positive milestones, including progressively lower hunting accident rates and more than 1 million hunter safety graduates.
But compared to when Gov. Warren Knowles signed the bill creating the program, things are very different these days.
The Wisconsin landscape is more developed and hunting isn’t something many people do out the back door anymore.
Fewer kids grow up in hunting families, too, and generally have less first-hand experience with hunting and firearm safety.
Then there’s the Internet. As people have become increasingly connected to digital devices, they’ve gotten cut off from real experiences in the outdoors.
Add to all that a population that wants things faster and easier.
Indeed, you could argue the challenges facing Wisconsin’s volunteer hunter education instructors have never been greater.
Nor has the importance of their service to the public.
When members of the Wisconsin Hunter Education Instructors Association gathered April 2728 in Fond du Lac for their 2018 convention, their pride was as evident as their commitment to meet modern demands.
The theme of the gathering was “The Time Is Now to Make Hunter Education Accessible to All — Making Internet Field Days & Short Courses Work for You.”
About 150 WHEIA members attended. “We’re in a time of change,” said John Plenke of Germantown, WHEIA president. “But we know what is critical to our mission and we’re working to make sure that doesn’t get lost.”
In addition to speakers, officer elections, a dinner banquet and awards, the meeting offered dual certification and instruction tracks.
Attendees could choose a hunting mentor certification program, held at the Fond du Lac Holiday Inn and led by Keith Warnke, R3 supervisor for the Department of Natural Resources.
Or they could become certified to instruct the internet field day (IFD) portion of a hunter education class. This workshop was held at the Isaak Walton League grounds in Fond du Lac.
According to state law, the Wisconsin hunter education program is under the auspices of the DNR. However, since the statute did not provide funding, the program has been run for five decades as a partnership between the DNR and volunteer instructors.
Wisconsin has about 3,700 unpaid hunter education teachers, the largest such corps in the nation.
The great work done by the state’s hunter education program is recorded in history.
In the decade before Wisconsin hunter education began, the 10-year average incident rate was 30 per 100,000 licensed hunters, according to DNR data.
In the 10 years after the program started, the incident rate fell to an average of 22 per 100,000.
A state law passed in 1985 required all hunters born after Jan. 1, 1973 to successfully complete a hunter education course before buying a license.
Hunting continued to get safer. In the decade ending in 2016, the rate was 3.6 per 100,000.
Is the improved safety record due entirely to hunter education classes?
No, advancements such as blaze orange clothing (required beginning in 1980) for gun deer hunting and changes in hunting practices, such as the increased use of tree stands and reduced reliance on deer drives, also have helped.
But the state’s education program and volunteer instructors deserve a lion’s share of the credit.
About 24,000 students are certified to hunt in Wisconsin each year.
The standard classes run 10 to 19 hours. The material includes wildlife ecology, hunting tactics, hunting regulations, tree stand safety and firearm safety.
“You can’t overemphasize the importance of hands-on firearm training for students,” said Plenke, who retired after a career as a DNR conservation and recreational safety warden and now works for the agency on a part-time basis.
As the Internet has become more pervasive and people seemingly have less time for classes, many states have changed their hunter education programs.
More than a dozen, including Texas, allow students of all legal ages to become certified entirely through an online course without ever having to demonstrate safe firearm handling.
And as of April, a Wisconsin law allows hunters age 18 and older to simply take the online course without any hands-on testing or instruction.
Such changes worry many veteran Wisconsin hunter safety instructors.
Jack Wendler of Ripon, a WHEIA member and hunter safety instructor for 40 years, was among the attendees in Fond du Lac.
“Everybody seems to want things instantly nowadays,” Wendler said. “And it has to come on a computer or phone. But firearm safety isn’t something you learn instantaneously.”
Through the decades, Wendler said he has seen the positive results from repetitive, handson training.
The lessons, using unloaded or dummy guns, teach proper muzzle control and carries, for example.
Wendler said he knows the online courses have become a reality, but he’s not convinced they do an adequate job. He hopes in-person teaching always retains a place in the Wisconsin hunter education program, at least for youth.
“If they read something, they’re likely to forget it the next day,” Wendler said. “But if you engage them in it, and repeat it enough, they’ll remember it.”
WHEIA is working to make changes while retaining the most important aspects of hunter education.
“The day and age of the course that starts Sept. 1 and ends Oct. 15 is gone,” Plenke said. “Most parents and their kids don’t have the time to spend with that kind of thing today.”
As a result, WHEIA set the agenda at this year’s conference to focus on certifying its members to run Internet Field Days, Learn To Hunt and mentored hunting programs.
The field day is a five- to seven-hour hands-on session of education and testing with a heavy emphasis on firearm safety. It follows successful online completion of the written course work.
The Learn to Hunt and mentored hunting programs provide additional opportunities for hunter safety instructors to educate and develop new hunters in their communities.
In addition to helping train instructors, Plenke said WHEIA will form a legislative committee to work with elected representatives to either craft bills helpful to hunter education or defeat those that may be harmful.
“The biggest thing is meeting the needs of our students without compromising the integrity of the training, especially hands-on training,” Plenke said.